My religion is a godless religion

Question 1:

God is not dead now, he has been dead always, so the question of disposing of his remains does not arise. God has never existed and cannot exist, for the simple reason that the whole existence is godliness. To divide God and existence, the creator and the creation, is a stupid duality.

One has to see the implications of it: God creating a world - from where? Something must have existed as a building material before God created the world. And if he can create the world like a magician then he is an idiotic magician. One can see the world as a proof. Is this the world a wise man will create? - to say nothing of a wise God.

This world shows absolutely that there is nobody behind it consciously creating it; otherwise all the nonsense that exists here should not be. God created the world at a certain time, at a certain date - according to Christians, who are the most foolish of all the religions, he created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus was born. It must have been Monday, the first of January, or perhaps the first of April - that seems to be more appropriate.

And what did he create? In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought - and this is the creation of God. His highest creation is man, and the whole of humanity is on the verge of committing a global suicide. This God must be some kind of a sadist. It is better that we simply forget all about God.

In the courts, THE BIBLE is presented to take oaths on. It is full of lies. In these two thousand years since Jesus, almost everything in THE BIBLE has become a lie. What about Charles Darwin? What about Albert Einstein?

Sometimes I wonder: have we lost all intelligence? It would be better to provide Albert Einstein's book to take an oath on. THE BIBLE is so full of obscenity, it is an insult to every court to have a BIBLE inside it. It is a contempt of court. And wonder of wonders, you have to take an oath that you will speak only the truth!

Jesus is born out of a virgin girl - I cannot take any oath on such rubbish. If a virgin girl can give birth to Jesus then everything is right; then there is no lie anywhere in the world, all is truth, you cannot lie - but this is impossible in the very nature of things.

The Old Testament says that God created the world. He created two daughters and made love to both of them. Now, the father making love to his own daughters - and this is a religious book! And this is your God! Hang him if you can find him.

And this is not only so about Christianity, it is more or less the same with all religions. No sane person can believe in God; only insane, retarded, utterly mediocre people can believe in God.

I have not found a single reason or argument given by thousands of priests of all the religions which has any validity. Still God continues to be worshipped. You have made him out of your foolishness, and you are worshipping him, praying to him. This is not the way to change the world, or man, or his consciousness.

So please don't say, "Now that God is dead." He has never been in the first place, so he cannot be dead.

I agree on many points with that madman Friedrich Nietzsche, but I don't agree on this point - that God is dead. Not that God is not dead - he has never been anywhere. Only existence is. Yes, there is a possibility of consciousness evolving, higher and higher. The moment consciousness comes to its highest peak it does not find any God there. It finds immense beauty, immense silence, absolute nothingness.

This I am saying on my own authority and through my own experience. You cannot go beyond absolute peace, silence, ecstasy. It goes on growing, but you never can go beyond it.

Hence, my religion is a godless religion.

There is no question of, no problem of disposing of the remains - there are none.

Question 2:

I am a simple man without any secret. I am just an open book, and a book in which nothing is written. If you like to call it a secret it is your choice, but it is a very open secret.

If you want to be, learn the art of being:

not to be.

Let me repeat it, because I know you are deaf. If you want really to be, the only way is to learn not to be. Disappear. Just as God disappears from existence, you have to disappear from your life. Let life flow of its own accord.

It is the simplest art in the world, to be silent. It is not a doing, it is a non-doing. How can it be difficult?

I am showing you the way of enlightenment through laziness. Nothing has to be done to attain it, because it is your nature. You have already got it. You are just so busy with outer business that you cannot see your own nature.

Deep within you is exactly the same as outside you: the beauty, the silence, the ecstasy, the blissfulness. But please, sometimes be kind to yourself: just sit down and don't do anything, either physically or mentally. Relax, not in an American way... because I have seen so many American books titled HOW TO RELAX. The very title says that the man knows nothing about relaxation.

There is no "how."

Yes, it is okay - "How to Repair a Car"; you will have to do something. But there is no doing as such as far as relaxation is concerned. Just don't do anything. I know you will find it a little difficult in the beginning. That is not because relaxation is difficult, it is because you have become addicted to doing something. That addiction will take a little time to disappear.

Just be, and watch. Being is not doing, and watching is also not doing. You sit silently doing nothing, witnessing whatsoever is happening. Thoughts will be moving in your mind; your body may be feeling some tension somewhere, you may have a migraine. Just be a witness. Don't be identified with it. Watch, be a watcher on the hills, and everything else is happening in the valley. It is a knack, not an art.

Meditation is not a science. It is not an art, it is a knack - just that way. All that you need is a little patience.

The old habits will continue; the thoughts will go on rushing. And your mind is always in a rush hour, the traffic is always jammed. Your body is not accustomed to sitting silently - you will be tossing and turning. Nothing to be worried about. Just watch that the body is tossing and turning, that the mind is whirling, is full of thoughts - consistent, inconsistent, useless - fantasies, dreams. You remain in the center, just watching.

All the religions of the world have taught people to do something: stop the process of thought, force the body into a still posture. That's what yoga is - a long practice of forcing the body to be still. But a forced body is not still. And all the prayers, concentrations, contemplations of all the religions do the same with the mind: they force it, they don't allow the thoughts to move. Yes, you have the capacity to do it. And if you persist you may be able to stop the thought process. But this is not the real thing, it is absolutely fake.

When stillness comes on its own, when silence descends without your effort, when you watch thoughts and a moment comes when thoughts start disappearing and silence starts happening, that is beautiful. The thoughts stop of their own accord if you don't identify, if you remain a witness and you don't say, "This is my thought."

You don't say, "This is bad, this is good," "This should be there...." and "This should not be there...."

Then you are not a watcher; you have prejudices, you have certain attitudes. A watcher has no prejudice, he has no judgment. He simply sees like a mirror.

When you bring something in front of a mirror it reflects, simply reflects. There is no judgment that the man is ugly, that the man is beautiful, that, "Aha! What a good nose you have got." The mirror has nothing to say. Its nature is to mirror; it mirrors. This is what I call meditation: you simply mirror everything within or without.

And I guarantee you.... I can guarantee because it has happened to me and to many of my people; just watching patiently - maybe a few days will pass, maybe a few months, maybe a few years.

There is no way of saying because each individual has a different collection.

You must have seen people collecting antiques, postal stamps. Everybody has a different collection; the quantity may be different, hence the time it takes will be different - but go on remaining a witness as much as you can. And this meditation needs no special time. You can wash the floor and remain silently watching yourself washing the floor.

I can move my hand unconsciously, without watching, or I can move it with full awareness. And there is a qualitative difference. When you move it unconsciously it is mechanical. When you move it with consciousness there is grace. Even in the hand, which is part of your body, you will feel silence, coolness - what to say about the mind?

With your watching and watching, slowly the rush of thoughts starts getting less and less. Moments of silence start appearing; a thought comes, and then there is silence before another thought appears. These gaps will give you the first glimpse of meditation and the first joy that you are arriving home.

Soon the gaps will be bigger, and finally the gap is always with you. You may be doing something, the silence is there. You may not be doing anything, the silence is there. Even in sleep the silence is there.

For a meditator there are no dreams; dreams and thoughts are cousin-brothers, there is not much difference. If thoughts disappear, dreams disappear. And if for twenty-four hours a day you are surrounded by silence you will come to know what my secret is.

If you go near a lake, you start feeling cool. There is no secret in it - it is the milieu. You go to the forest and you feel the difference in the atmosphere. You are the same but the atmosphere around you is different.

When you come closer to me... and to come closer to me you are not to walk and sit by my side. To come closer to me is to be not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan, not a Buddhist, not a communist. To come close to me means that you don't cling to any ideology, you don't go on holding onto the past. To come close to me means you start living moment to moment.

Neither the past means anything to you, nor are you worried about the future. This very moment becomes the only reality. In fact it is the only reality. And if you can be in this moment, you can be on a faraway star but you will be close to me and you will feel a serenity, a silence, a lovingness such as you have never known.

I am not doing anything, remember, so don't be grateful to me. I am a non-doer - I am just being available. That is not much of a doing. I am available, like the trees in the forest and the lakes and the ocean, and the sun and the moon. I am available. Now it is up to you to come close to me, or go away from me.

If you can come close to me you will start feeling things that have been unknown to you, and soon you will realize that what you are feeling close to me you can feel yourself wherever you are. That is the greatest moment of happiness for a master, when his disciple can be on his own.

You must know the meaning of being a disciple, people have forgotten; it comes from "discipline."

And all the religions have corrupted the meaning of discipline; its root meaning is learning.

Coming close is learning.

What I have got, you have got.

I am aware of it, you are not aware of it.

Coming close to me you will learn, "My God! This has always been with me, and I have been searching all over the world, looking into the books, scriptures, seeking the teachers, becoming a member of rotten cults like Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism - all dead."

Yes, when Buddha was there what is happening to you was happening to his people. But when Buddha is gone what is left behind is mere words, containers; the content is not there. You can go on decorating the containers, but that will not help. You know perfectly well that your statues in the temples, your scriptures in the churches, are just dust of the past. It is better to be finished with them.

But why are you seeking? You are seeking because you are not aware that you have got it already.

I cannot give it to you. I can only make you aware, and for that nothing is needed but availability on my part, availability on your part. If these two availabilities are there, two opennesses, without any conditions, it clicks. Suddenly you become a mirror, and the moment you become a mirror you become a master. The same will start happening around you.

So I don't want you always to remain disciples. That will be a shame.

In the past all the religions have tried just the opposite of what I am doing. That's why they cannot believe that this is a religion. I am changing the very definition and the foundations. Those old religions were saying that Jesus Christ is the only begotten son of God, you are not. He is special, you are ordinary. He comes with a message from God, from above. He has a speciality, he is extra-ordinary.

At the most you can be Christians, but you cannot be a Christ. Have you thought about it, that in two thousand years nobody has been a Christ again? What kind of religion is this? Just Christians! The first and the last Christ was crucified two thousand years ago; since then nothing has happened, because unless you become a Christ your Christianity is just a hypocrisy. The same is true about other religions.

Once it happened in Baghdad - Caliph Omar was the sovereign. A man was brought to him who was claiming that he had been sent by God and that he brought the latest word of God, the latest message, because Mohammed's message was thirteen hundred years old, and in thirteen hundred years a new message - better, more polished, more sophisticated - was needed. He had been sent by God.

Now, Mohammedans cannot accept anybody as a prophet after Mohammed. No religion accepts anybody else as a prophet. Christians cannot accept anybody as a Christ. Buddhists cannot accept another as a Buddha. Why? Why this similarity? There is some arithmetic behind it. A new prophet will disturb the gullible, the old believers, because he will say something new. He may say something against the KORAN, THE BIBLE, the GITA; he is bound to.

I cannot agree with Krishna, the GITA that he had spoken five thousand years ago. Five thousand years have not gone just as a waste; man's consciousness has risen, intelligence has become more solid. And what Krishna teaches is violence. If Krishna is right, then the third world war is perfectly okay.

I cannot give that okay to the third world war. Krishna says, "It is God's will. If he wants the war, all your pacifists can go on parading in the capitals of the world with posters against war - it will not change anything. If God wants the war then the war is going to happen." That is the message of the GITA. Arjuna, Krishna's chief disciple and friend, tried hard to argue.

But those arguments are all ordinary. If I had been in his place, just a single sentence from me would have been enough - there would have been no need to make such a big book. I would have said to Krishna, "This is God's will, that I am going to the Himalayas. Who are you to interpret God's will? And how can I accept it, that your interpretation is right? You say that God wants the war - I say no."

And in fact the no seems to be more rational, more loving, more meaningful, more humane. Rather than arguing with that man, Arjuna had just to say: "I have accepted your idea that whatsoever happens, happens according to God" - and then should have left for the Himalayas.

He wanted to be a sannyasin, a meditator in the Himalayas. Krishna would not have been able to stop him - just because of his own argument. Arjuna could have said, "If war is to happen, God will bring me back - but you keep quiet."

Hence Hindus would not like anybody else to be accepted as a prophet of God.

Mohammed talks nonsense. You cannot expect anything better from an uneducated man who could not write, who could not read, who had never been in any way a meditative man.

He married nine women. Now, I cannot support that, because in the world men and women are almost in equal proportions. If one man marries nine women then what about the eight men who will be left without women? Then California will be all over the world. That catastrophe I cannot allow. I would rather that California went down into the ocean with all its homosexuals, with all its perverts.

It would be better, far more beneficial, and a blessing to humanity.

But Mohammed marries nine women - of course; he is a messenger of God. Mohammedans he allows to marry four women - naturally; he has to keep himself higher. Mohammedans are still marrying four women. Anyone with any intelligence can see the point: these are the people who create prostitution. They have created prostitutes, because what about the three men whose women they have married?

And can you understand a simple, biological thing? You cannot even satisfy a single woman sexually, what about four or nine? - because recent research shows that a woman is capable of multiple orgasms. A man is not capable of that. If he is young, below thirty-five, he may be able to have one orgasm. And I am saying maybe. It is not certain, because man is in such a hurry that before the orgasm can happen he is finished.

Orgasm needs a certain patience, to move with the woman, with the same pace. The woman moves slowly. By the time she comes close to her orgasm, the man has gone to sleep and is snoring.

Eighty percent of women in the world have not known what orgasm is. And in a country like India, ninety-nine percent of women know nothing about orgasm.

Biologically, a man cannot satisfy four women. Then those women are going to look around the neighborhood. These religions have created all kinds of perversions: prostitution, obscenity. And if these men cannot find women, at least they can look at PLAYBOY - just pictures of naked women!

One feels the world has lived in an insane way. Will your hunger be satisfied by seeing beautiful dishes in a picture? Can you eat them? But that is what is happening to man's sexuality.

He looks into magazines - vulgar, obscene - of naked women. For what? - when there are equal numbers of women available, living, alive, not just photographs.

Four women to one man! But this is nothing, four or nine; Krishna had sixteen thousand women to himself! I sometimes start wondering... sixteen thousand women. Even to remember their names is difficult.

I know, because I have more than half a million sannyasins around the world; I cannot remember their names. And Krishna lived only ninety years. In ninety years how did he manage to make love to sixteen thousand women? Perhaps to one woman once in her life... and then she was abandoned.

This is ugly.

That's why new prophets are not allowed by any religion - because they will look, scrutinize, see that these things are ugly.

In Baghdad this man declared, "I am the prophet of God, the latest, and I bring a more sophisticated message than Mohammed." Mohammedans could not tolerate it. Omar himself was a very cultured man.... Now you may be cultured, but your Mohammedanism is there; it goes on poisoning you.

Omar sent the man to the prison, told the guards, "Don't give him food. Bind him to a pole, beat him continuously, and don't let him sleep. After seven days I will come to ask what he thinks."

After seven days he came. The man was almost dying, without food, without sleep, continuously beaten for twenty-four hours a day. Omar laughed and said, "Now have you changed your mind, or do you still think you are the last messenger of God?"

The man laughed more loudly than Omar and said, "This torture for seven days proves that I am the prophet of God, because when I was leaving him to take my voyage to the earth, I asked him, 'They have not behaved well with prophets in the past - what is going to happen to me?' He said, 'You will be tortured.' You have proved that I am really the prophet of God. Before this torture sometimes I used to doubt, to think that perhaps I am imagining, but now there is no question of doubt."

At that very moment, from another pole, another naked man who had been there for one month continuously being tortured, shouted, "Omar, don't listen to that idiot! I have not sent him. After Mohammed I have not sent anybody else." One month before this man had been caught declaring himself God!

These religions are just dead history. They cannot give you anything. Only a living master is capable of creating an atmosphere I call the buddhafield, the field for awakening.

And I have chosen Oregon because I could not find so many sleepy people anywhere else in the world; otherwise, who has heard of any prophet in Oregon? I thought, "Even a small place like Judea can claim Jesus, Jerusalem can claim Moses, small places like Mecca and Medina can claim Mohammed. Oregon is absolutely impotent." I thought it would be good; hence I am here.

But to wake up a sleepy man is always a difficult job. The sleepy man does not want to wake up.

Sleep helps him to forget all the worries of life, the troubles of life. Sleep is a narcotic. It is a drug naturally provided by biology; otherwise you would all go mad. Six, eight hours of sleep help you to keep on dragging your life towards the grave.

Naturally Oregonians are disturbed: we are celebrating here. And what are they doing? They are collecting National Guard vehicles in Madras - as if this is an army and we are going to attack and start the third world war. We believe in love, we believe in silence. We believe that man can live in coexistence with nature, with other people.

This is the only city which has no crime, but it has been declared by the attorney general of Oregon to be illegal. This is how sleepy people behave. In their sleep the only legal city looks illegal to them!

We have no crime, no prostitutes, no stealing, no drugs. this is our fault. For us to be peaceful, to be silent, just to be happy, they cannot tolerate. They cannot believe it, because it has never happened in their life - poor people! I really feel sorry for them.

This place is creating a New Man.

But naturally the old mind will create every difficulty, will use every means so that the New Man is not born. Why? - it hurts. Seeing a man dancing, singing, enjoying, peaceful with himself and existence hurts those people who have become accustomed to living in misery, who have become accustomed to living a life which is not living at all. They cannot tolerate you.

I have heard about a woman who was ugly, really ugly. She used to break mirrors; wherever she found a mirror she would break it immediately.

People asked, "Are you mad? Why do you break mirrors?"

She said, "These mirrors make me ugly."

Now you will be becoming mirrors amongst sleepy people. You will disturb their sleep. They are going to destroy you. And remember, you are very few - they are many.

But one thing is positively in your favor: you have something - you have a contentment. They are empty. Just kick the empty boxes as hard as you can! Perhaps they may wake up and thank you for it.

Question 3:

Religion is the highest luxury in the world. The idiot cannot realize it while remaining an idiot.

The mediocre cannot even conceive its possibility while remaining mediocre. Only the highest intelligence can reach to that point where religion flowers.

Religion needs courage, intelligence, daring, because you are going higher and higher in the world of consciousness. The mediocre has no idea that there is anything higher than himself. The only possibility for the mediocre is that he can drop his mediocrity.

Nobody is born mediocre. People are made mediocre by the politicians, by the priests, by the education system. You think you go to the school to be made more intelligent - you are wrong.

You go to the college, you to go the university, you have a masters degree, you can have a Ph.D., you can become a D.Litt. A D.Litt means that now the society has recognized that the doors for the evolution of your consciousness are completely closed. Now for you there is no way.

The whole educational system is arranged in such a way that it teaches you, trains you for memory, not for intelligence - and these two things are totally different. A very intelligent man may not have a very good memory. In fact to have a good memory means you are mediocre. A good memory simply proves you are only a computer, not even a man, so what has been fed into you you can repeat.

You can see it very easily: the people who top the universities, come first in the class, receive golden medals - where do they all disappear in the world? Their gold medals don't shine in the world. In the world you will not be able to recognize them. Educational systems train you for a good memory, so you can repeat absolutely useless things.

When was Genghis Khan born? Now what purpose does that serve? If he had not been born it would have been better. At least we can do one thing, we can remove him from our memory; he was a nightmare. When did the second world war begin? This is history, you have to memorize it. And when you memorize history - Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and other idiots who may be in the history, or who are right now making history, who soon will be part of the history....

It is better to forget these people. It would have been better if there had been no second world war.

That is the only way to prevent the third world war. Forget all this nonsense that man has been doing to man.

But the whole educational system is to make you memorize. And man's mind is capable of memorizing without any limit. It has been found that that is possible because in a man's small skull there are millions of cells which memorize. It is just like tape recording. All the books in all the libraries of the world can be memorized by a single person - that much capacity your memory has.

But then you get lost in your memory, you forget what intelligence is. Intelligence is totally different.

Intelligence is the capacity to be silent, to be awake, to be able to see the truth.

But nobody is interested in truth; in fact they are all against it, because what will happen to all these politicians around the world who are constantly lying? If truth is known they will go down the drain.

You are fed with lies and you are distracted from intelligence towards memory. Memory is part of your brain, and you live your whole life in your brain. That's why I say only intelligent people can be religious.

Just by being a Christian, going every Sunday to the church, listening to the same boring sermon....

And there is never any argument, because argument brings intelligence in.

Every religion expects you to believe; the unbeliever is condemned. And without doubt you cannot increase your intelligence. This is the trouble. All the religions are helping you to remain mediocre, stupid, by emphasizing belief: belief in God, belief in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.... Believe, because those who believe will attain to paradise. All the religions are giving you good awards - just believe.

Just the other day I came to know that in New York the anti-abortionists were having a conference:

abortion should be no longer legal, it should become a crime. All the religions of the world agree on such points. It is very strange: they don't agree on any theological points, but on this point Hindus agree, Mohammedans agree, Christians agree, Jews agree, everybody agrees - abortion is a sin.

Mother Teresa was in the conference, speaking against abortion, and she said, "There is violence in the world because of abortion."

I could not believe it. If someone had said, "The violence in the world is because of overpopulation,"

that would have sounded more true. But this old woman is given a Nobel prize - for what? Everything she does is against humanity. What arguments did she place before the conference? Why does abortion create violence in the world? Because abortion means you are killing a living body, you are making people killers of their own children, that opens the door to violence. The argument looks good, but it only looks good.

At what point is the child alive? If abortion creates violence, then at what point is the child alive? At the time when the male and female living cells meet - is that the point of life? It has to be, because otherwise from where will life come? But if it is life, that means that when the living cells were male and female, when the female eggs were in a woman's body and the male cells were in a man's body - were they alive or not?

Celibacy kills more than anything else, because if a nun, a celibate nun, who is not going to produce a child at all... then all those living cells that she brings from her mother's womb.... In a woman's body cells don't grow, she brings them from birth. All those eggs waiting to be alive, waiting to be Ronald Reagan - they die without any chance.

And do you know... a man, a single man, produces in his whole life, from age fourteen up to fifty, so many living cells that that single man can populate the whole world. What to say about a celibate monk? Every single monk is killing millions of people!

From where does the violence begin? If anybody is responsible then it is Mother Teresa, the pope, their God. Why does he go on and on producing eggs and living sperms? It is time to stop. Already the world is four times more populated than it should be. If the world population can be reduced to one-fourth there will be no poverty, no violence; thousands of problems will disappear.

But Mother Teresa is given a Nobel prize because she helps orphans, opens orphanages around the world. She is creating problems; these orphans will create children. And she is against abortion, because if abortion is legal from where is she going to get the orphans? And what about the Nobel prize? This senile woman is driving people crazy.

Absolute birth control is needed at least for two decades. Absolute, I say! Not that you have to stop after two children or three children - no, that will not help.

Half the world is dying of starvation, and you will be surprised to know that the poor countries, the starving countries, produce more children, for the simple reason that they don't have any other means of passing their time. To go to the movies, money is needed; to go to a disco, money is needed. Sex is the only free entertainment.

Absolute birth control is needed.

This is the only city where no child has been born in four years.

Unless we cut the world population there is no way to avoid violence. People are hungry, people are starving, dying. When somebody is hungry he is going to steal. When somebody is dying, what does he care if he kills somebody else and gets money to survive? - because lust for life is the basis of all biological growth. A man can do anything to survive.

And secondly, if abortion becomes illegal... the pope would like to make all birth control methods illegal. If abortion is illegal, if birth control methods are illegal, can you think what will happen to this world? Everybody will be at everybody else's neck just to survive.

And it has to be remembered that birth control and abortion have given women equality, the same status as men; otherwise the woman can never be equal to man. In poor countries she is continually giving birth, a child every year. She is always pregnant. She cannot work, she cannot be financially independent. She cannot get as educated as man, she cannot be in politics; she has to take care of the children.

Birth control methods, abortion - these have made possibilities for women to be equal to men; otherwise all talk about equality is bogus, false, pseudo.

But strange... Mother Teresa is a woman, and she has there two or three dozen nuns - who are all women. She has an order of nuns, and they don't even see that not a single woman has been accepted as pope in these two thousand years. Not a single woman has been accepted as a Christ, a buddha, a prophet - no. If a woman manages somehow to get into religious matters she is called a witch.

The word is not bad, but Christians have given it a bad connotation. Literally the word "witch" means a wise woman. But when you call a woman a witch you do not mean that she is wise. These popes have been declaring women witches - not only declaring, they have been burning women alive, thousands of women. During the whole Middle Ages they were burning witches.

Who were these witches? What were they doing? They were interfering in religious matters, and man would not like any woman to enter into the hierarchy of religion; otherwise, she may become a prophet, she may become a pope, she may declare herself a Christ.

In Hinduism women are not allowed to read the scriptures. In fact there is no time for them - taking care of the house, taking care of the children... and they are continuously pregnant. This is what Mother Teresa wants. This is what your popes, your bishops want. They will create a mediocre world. They want a mediocre world, just on the survival level.

Remember one simple scientific truth, that if a plant does not get enough water, enough food, enough air, then the first thing to disappear will be the flowers. They are the most delicate. The higher a thing is, the more delicate it is, the more fragile it is. Then the leaves will start disappearing, then the branches will start disappearing. At the end there will be only roots, underground.

The same is the situation in every dimension: if you don't allow man comfort, luxury, time, he will never reach to higher peaks. He is, on the contrary, prevented from reaching towards religion.

The first thing religions say is: Believe. That is against true religion. I say to you, doubt everything, unless you discover something which you cannot doubt. I don't say to believe. I say, find out something which, even if you want to, you cannot doubt: it is there, a reality, a truth.

Go on doubting. Doubt is the method of a true religion - just as it is a method of a true science. By doubting you eliminate all that is wrong, and finally only that which is true remains in your hand. Try to doubt it too. But you cannot - it is there. And when truth is known - lived, not believed - only then do you understand what religion is.

All these religions are anti-religious. The religions that exist in the world are anti-religious. My effort is to create the first religion in the world. All these people have been preventing religion from happening; hence, they are all against me.

You will be surprised... it has never happened before - all religions are against me. They have never been against anybody all together; on this point they are in agreement. And, even more surprising, atheists are against me. They too agree with the theists on this point. Communists are against me.

They don't believe in God, they don't believe in the soul, they don't believe in meditation, but they are also in agreement with people who believe in God, who believe in the soul, who believe in all kinds of things. On only one point, one single point, are they all agreed.

This has never happened; it is happening now for the simple reason that I am clearly giving you the indication.

My fingers are pointing towards the truth.

Belief is not needed, scriptures are not needed, prophets are not needed, God is not needed. A tremendous courage to doubt everything is needed. It is your doubting capacity which will sharpen your intelligence, destroy your mediocrity. But remember, with your mediocrity many other things will be destroyed which depend on mediocrity. So beware, I am a dangerous man.

If you want to be intelligent you cannot be in politics. Politics needs idiots, people who can lie, people who can go on lying, people who have double faces, people who can change their personality any moment. They don't have any individuality. If you want to be intelligent you cannot be in any politics.

If you want to be really religious you cannot be a member of any religious cult. You have to be free.

You have to be individual, you have to be on your own. It will be fearful in the beginning because you have always lived in the crowd. The crowd gives you a certain coziness, warmth. You will be in the cold, alone.

If you are ready to be alone and in the cold, and ready to go in darkness in search of light, religion is yours.